Not so sure about this. Good programmers can change jobs very frequently. I know many people who have never stayed at the same company more than a couple of years. That's just part of their ambitious, challenge-seeking nature, the will to improve and take things to the next level - it's not really an indictment of the places they stayed before.
I'd be suspicious of a departmnt with a turnover rate around 6 months, sure, but if it was 5 years I'd be equally worried, because unless working for that company was the shit then I'd be concerned with the kind of developers the company had hired in the past and what kind of culture such a bunch of unambitious seat-warmers had developed, and I'd be expected to fit into.
The sweet spot that I've noticed seems to be around 3 years average. Anything more than that doesn't appear to make a difference in overall happiness levels. Lower than that and I start to have concerns.
This was a question I used to ask my consulting clients to get a feel for what sort of department I was going to be walking in to. The higher turnover places always had the worst development practices in place (or none at all, like a complete free-for-all), and the places with less developer turnover tended to have fewer people focused on guaranteeing themselves job security & more people focused on efficiency.
Yep, matches up with my experience pretty well. Around 2 or 3 years is a good sign that the place isn't a terrible place to work, and also that it's not full of make-work existence-justifying lifers.
A bad place to work can actually be fun for a while, if you have good coworkers. It can be a bonding experience, a rite of passage, friendships forged in the fires of mt doom etc. But indifferent management and ashen-faced zombie coworkers determined to cling to their mediocre jobs until they rot to death in their seats? It's a different type of poison, but just as deadly ..
I'd be suspicious of a departmnt with a turnover rate around 6 months, sure, but if it was 5 years I'd be equally worried, because unless working for that company was the shit then I'd be concerned with the kind of developers the company had hired in the past and what kind of culture such a bunch of unambitious seat-warmers had developed, and I'd be expected to fit into.